Tag: carbon tax

Taking action on climate is about a lot more than our energy economy. Climate disruption is the leading threat to our built environment, an accelerant of armed conflict, and a leading cause of mass migration. Its effects intensify and prolong storms, droughts, wildfires, and floods — resulting in the US spending as much on disaster … Continue reading Declare Energy Independence with Carbon Dividends

Australian PM Tony Abbott, who dismantled a policy to price carbon, rose to power by attacking and dividing—a strategy that eventually backfired. Tony Abbott came into office with a hard-charging campaign against his predecessors, and a vow to repeal Australia’s carbon pricing law. Abbott had been close to the coal industry and had opposed Australia … Continue reading Why Climate Action Opponent Tony Abbott was Ousted

An idea whose time has come

In 2010, when Citizens’ Climate Lobby brought 25 citizen volunteers to Capitol Hill, it felt like a big challenge to get enough people to go the distance, to meet with all 535 voting members of Congress. This year, we brought 36 times as many people, and it is looking more like we will need more elected officials to welcome and build relationships with all the citizen lobbyists coming to make democracy work.

The 2015 CCL International Conference brought a record number of citizen volunteer lobbyists together—more than 900—to have real policy discussions with elected officials. It was a breakthrough year in a lot of ways:

For the first time, we had more people attending than could reasonably fit into the meetings we had scheduled.

We had nearly three times as many volunteers to role-play members of Congress in our basic training than we had volunteers total in our first conference.

We heard from not one but two great scientists who have been named to TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people on Earth.

We were joined by dozens of faith leaders, who came to support this message of enhanced civics and substantive policy for a livable world.

We are now living in the beginning of a period of global transition. Over the next two decades we will be rebuilding the infrastructure of our civilization. We could choose to replace existing infrastructure with something similar, but slightly newer and more expensive… or we could choose to build the economy of the future. There’s no question about which is a better investment.

It is my great privilege to be working for Citizens Climate Lobby. After four years volunteering with this tremendous family of committed, engaged citizens, all collaborating to ensure a safe, secure climate future, through genuine democratic process, this month I was hired as Strategic Coordinator. I don’t think it would be possible to find a more rewarding and inspired group of people to work with on a day to day basis, and the work itself allows me the blessed experience of using my abilities to help others to be the constructive future-builders they long to be.

It is estimated that nearly $5 trillion per year is spent to support the fossil fuel industry globally by governments (in the form of subsidies, tax credits and other industry support spending) and through hidden “externalized” costs paid by governments and consumers alike (some from health, some from degradation of vital natural resources, some from political and economic turbulence, disruption and waste). It costs a lot of money to make fossil fuels appear to be a “low-cost” way to make historic profits and provide energy. You are paying that hidden carbon tax every day, as part of the cost of almost everything you do.

While vested interests push risky schemes like the Keystone XL pipeline, which will gravely exacerbate the climate destabilization we already face, global human industry has now pushed atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 400 ppm, 50% above the norm for almost all of the history of our species.

We need to change course and organize our relationship to Earth’s life support systems more intelligently. We not only know how to do set in motion this global transition; we know how to do it affordably, with no cost to taxpayers, no expansion of government, and a vast expansion of private capital investment in middle-class job creation and new technologies.

Fee on carbon-emitting fuels, at the source (mine, well, port of entry)

100% of revenues returned, in equal shares, to every household, every month

Non-protectionist border adjustment, to ensure level playing field

Power over energy economy returned to consumers

Major energy-sector investment flows to clean, renewable resources

The conventional wisdom on action to reduce carbon emissions is that it must be expensive, harmful to the economy, and result in less productive power generation. This is a blatant falsehood based on the outmoded idea that combustion is the most favorable way to harvest energy. All systems of carbon taxation or carbon emissions capping operate on the principle that applying economic pressure in a targeted way can inspire markets to change their behavior. This is the very logic of market-based economic systems.